Titanic Writing Prompt

Writers see stories everywhere--- in a glimpse of two people saying good-bye, in a conversation between sisters queued up for train tickets. In a photograph. The final photograph.

The woman looks careworn, old before her time, worn down by life as a widow with young children to care for. Her five boys are robust, healthy, well groomed and a bit bored by the whole process of photography. They surround their mother, a tableau created by the photographer in the studio in Athlone.

This very photo is going to be auctioned by George F. Mealy next month in Dublin. He expects the picture to bring in around E1000.

The value of any other family photo would not be so high, with the true value of such a memento to be found in the emotional link that is priceless. What makes this picture of the widow Margaret Rice and her five young sons so valuable is the fact that it was likely created as a keepsake for her family that she was leaving behind in Ireland.

Mrs. Rice boarded the Titanic for a better life in America. She and her five boys drowned.

It's known that she lived in Spokane, Washington, for a time. While there, her husband died in an accident and the widow returned to Athlone where she no doubt had family. She took a job as a housekeeper, but after a time she decided that she'd rather be in the States after all.

There's a story in there, a tale of a woman struggling to provide for her children. What hardships might she have faced while skivvying for a well-to-do family? What did she do with her sons while she was working?

What drove her to buy third class passage on the largest steamship to sail the Atlantic, and did she choose the Titanic because it was marketed as unsinkable?

There is a story there. A sweeping epic or a tragic romance, it is up to an author to put meat on the bones of a story that exists within a gold coloured frame, a family photograph that was snapped in 1912 and left behind by a woman who had no idea that she was sailing to her death.